With the proliferation of cable TV and the high bandwidth currently available for the Internet, which promises to increase even more in the near future, Internet TV is fast becoming a viable alternative to regular and cable TV broadcast channels. Moreover, Internet TV is not subject to the government licensing laws required by cable and broadcast TV channels and thus offers programs that may not be obtainable using regular and cable TV broadcast channels.
It is not uncommon for Internet broadcasters to offer near DVD-quality movies that can be viewed either using video streaming or downloaded to the hard disk of a subscriber's computer for viewing “off-line”. The video quality of such movies is vastly superior to that obtainable on a regular TV set, owing to the high resolution associated with computer displays that cannot presently be matched by TV screens. However, this is not particularly troublesome where only pictures are displayed; but it becomes a problem when textual information is displayed that is formatted for high resolution computer monitors since the text is then barely legible when displayed on lower resolution TV screens. Thus, if a regular TV set is used to display Internet content that is rich in text, the resulting display quality is poor.
It would therefore be a significant benefit to users of low resolution displays such as TV screens, to be able to watch regular and cable TV broadcasts and to integrate with Internet content on demand. In particular, it would be desirable to provide such a user with a visual and legible indication when viewing a regular or TV broadcast of available Internet movies or other programs and allow him to use the displayed indication to integrate with a desired Internet broadcast.
These requirements have been only partially addressed in the art. WO 00/08855 to United Video Properties, Inc. and entitled “A system and method for synchronizing television-related product content and internet-delivered information” describes a screen generator that merges program guide data with a TV image and superimposes an Interactive TV Guide on the regular TV image.
US 2002/0093594 (Kikinis) entitled “Method and system for identifying addressing data within a television presentation” illustrates in FIG. 5 the common connection of TV and Internet to a set-top box.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,606,746 to OpenTV, Inc. entitled “Interactive television system and method for displaying a graphical user interface using insert pictures” discloses interactive television having a compressed background picture and one or more compressed insert pictures commonly connected to a TV-Internet Integration box. The compressed insert pictures represent items of a GUI. The local system i.e. computer “pastes” the insert pictures into the background image.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,130,898 to Bell Atlantic Network Services, Inc., entitled “Simulcasting digital video programs for broadcast and interactive services” teaches an interactive TV system where TV broadcast data is merged with Internet data. To this end, public wireless packet data network is combined with a broadband digital broadcast network at a plurality of transmitter sites. Customer premises receiving systems include a receiving antenna and one or more digital entertainment terminals. The terminal includes a channel selector and digital receiver for capturing a digital transport stream from a selected channel. A processor converts selected program information from the transport stream for presentation, e.g. via a television set. The terminal also includes a CPU controlling the operation of the channel selector and the processor in response to user inputs.
None of these references appears to disclose the ability to merge broadcast TV signals with IP packet data at a customer site, specifically in such a manner that a conventional TV set is able to display Internet program selection data while viewing a TV broadcast program and to use the selected data to select an Internet channel, such as a movie, for display on the TV set instead of the TV broadcast program.